I'm like the bitter, used up coffee grounds that you throw in the compost bin after you've finished making your cup of coffee, and he is like the finest cup brewed, with just enough sugar to make it sweet, just enough cream to brighten up the whole day. He is that perfection, but I am not. He is like the light that passes through the stained glass windows in a church, something holy, beautiful, something that brings life into your world. I am the cloud that passes over the sun, blocking the light. I am darkness, and he is light. I am wrong, and he is right.
I know this, and yet I desperately cling to the hope that he'll hold me tight one day, that it'll just be the two of us, that he'll be okay with my bitter existence. That he'll love that existence. I tried to push that hope out of me. I really did, but it remains, foolish as it is.
I know I don't seem like the type, but I write poetry, and songs. Lots of songs, and I play the acoustic. You can't live with Antonio for that long, and not pick up the acoustic guitar- it's just not possible. They're all for him, and all pushed somewhere deep under my mattress, but sometimes, when he's out with that German bastard I take them all out, sing all of them, read all of them. I gaze over the hidden paintings, stashed somewhere deep inside my closet where he'll never find them.
A voice deep down inside of me whispers, he loves 'that German bastard', and I tell that voice to shut up. But it won't. It never does, it's always there, nagging. Reminding. Just like everyone around me, whispering about how Feliciano is so much nicer than me, so happy, so sweet, so much better. At first, one could say I was angry about it, so envious...
Now I know they're right. Now all it is is a dull reminder to me that I am not good enough for Feliciano...
"What do you mean, 'not good enough'? You're amazing, Fratello!" I hear him call, in my mind, my imagination. I close my eyes, pretend that his lips ghost over mine. I pretend that he's holding me close, that he's here. I have come to imagine so well that I really feel these things. It would be so easy just to lose that line between reality and fantasy.
"Fratello, are you okay? You're acting funny lately," he says, then continues on to babble in that cute way he does. He keeps talking, but it's not the same way I usually imagine it. Usually he says 'Ti amo'. Usually he kisses me more.
"Hey, why were you talking to yourself? Why do you think you aren't good enough for me? That's silly, Fratello, you're the only person who I could ever truly love," Feliciano says, smiling wider than the clear blue skies on a perfect Summer's day. That's when it hits me, that this time he's really there. He's really holding me, he really kissed me.
My head spins as I reach out for his face, it's warm, and pull him in for a kiss. And then the fantasy ends, it's just me. He's not there. I lied to myself again.